Written and directed by David Ayer
Starring Shia LaBeouf, George Lopez, Bobby Soto and Cinthya Carmona
Running Time: 1 hour and 28 minutes

by Liz Wiest

“Payback comes with interest” teases the intense block lettering of the first five seconds of The Tax Collector trailer. This latest crime thriller from director/screenwriter David Ayer (Training Day, Suicide Squad) propels the audience into the seedy underbelly of modern Los Angeles gang wars, with “tax collectors” David (Bobby Soto) and Creeper (Shia LaBeouf) at the forefront of the action. The pair of gangsters and unlikely best friends make their living as the eyes, ears and muscle for a mysterious mob boss referred to only as the “Wizard” and find themselves having to retaliate when his old rival, Conejo, resurfaces with a vengeance. However, while this payback sought from Conejo is the driving force of the film, it lacks any ability to ignite real “interest” from anyone.

The screenplay, also done by Ayer, is a blueprint for a gritty testosterone fest that culminates in an epic shoot-em-out and ritual sacrifice, topped with a cherry of a plot twist plucked from an iconic franchise that shall remain nameless. The exposition that paints David as a deeply spiritual family man who struggles to compartmentalize his idyllic life and dangerous work is drawn out and tedious, and never provides a clear understanding of what his objective actually is. Creeper, on the other hand, is the exact opposite. His wants are primal, and while there is a part of him that envies David’s spirituality and ability to have it all, he knows he is too damned to ever achieve it for himself. The two embark on several segmented “missions” to articulate the point that they are video game character-level badasses, while all of the threads eventually tie together to end with Conejo and David being the last men standing in a brutal face-off.

David is described by the leader of the Bloods multiple times as “a candle in the darkness” of the underground world they are both a part of. However, affixing the protagonist with a pre-established “good guy” persona ultimately felt as though Ayer initially desired to marry a subverted Christ metaphor into the world of gangs, but didn’t follow through enough. Soto’s performance also lacked any real depth, and any scenes that required him to intimidate felt soft and unconvincing. Even his chemistry with his on-screen wife Alexis (Cinthya Carmona) felt awkward and forced, and his self-discovery moment in the finale just missed the mark entirely.

The elephant in the room prior to the release, and throughout the entire course of the film, surrounds Shia LaBeouf’s stunt casting in a role that raised a lot of eyebrows. Upon the release of the trailer, Twitter exploded with angry critics, chastising LaBeouf for being in apparent brownface and for the tone of the film being entirely reliant on stereotypes. While Ayer took to the internet to set the record straight and defend his casting decision, the final product truly seemed to reaffirm the questions social media had posed. Ultimately, the most “authentic” parts of LaBeouf’s performance ended up being the tattoos he got across his entire chest strictly for the role. Otherwise, his depiction feels strangely akin to Pitbull (Mr. 305), not unlike how James Franco infamously channeled Riff Raff in A24’s Spring Breakers.

While the film is shot in its entirety like a gritty, Golden Age Hip-Hop music video homage, The Tax Collector provides very little outside of visuals and a handful of practical effects that were admittedly impressive. The dialogue was inauthentic and often sounded like it was written by a bot that was forced to watch hours of gangster flicks. Because, despite protestations, any and all problems in the script boil down to Ayer, a self-proclaimed “whitey”, attempting to insert his voice into a world that he does not belong to. Every female character, including Alexis, the de facto heroine, felt like nothing more than a prop, and while none of the back stories of any of the characters felt sincere, hers in particular came off as forced and cringe worthy.

The Tax Collector relies on the lazily executed subplots of religion and morality and the institution of family to give it any larger takeaway or to differentiate from the plethora of other movies of its kind. The ending, in theory, is meant to inspire viewers to hug their spouses and kids closely, but after an hour and a half of one-dimensional characters interacting with one another in stale, graphic scenes like ones we’ve seen many times before, it’s nearly impossible to experience any type of catharsis along with David. Its themes drastically fall short of what American cinema needs at this time, and only highlights the drastic need for authentic storytelling by those voices who we are claiming to amplify.

Available in digital theatres August 7th.